In the past, publishers of content and news decided what content to produce and what topics to write about. Consumers of content opted in to receive specific types of content by subscribing to specific publications or sources. For example, football fans eagerly awaited the Monday morning paper to read the box scores and recaps of how their favorite team fared the previous day. The Internet has changed that model, as readers and consumers of news and information now expect to be able to find the information they wish to consume, when they want it.
Social media platforms, blogs and other online publications allow news and information to spread rapidly. Consumers of content expect to find information instantly—almost in real time. Consumers are less reliant on a single source of information. Now, instead of waiting for the newspaper to arrive, consumers seek out information from whatever source has it. Football fans don't wait for the Monday morning paper to check the box scores. This change in how information is shared and consumed makes it more difficult for producers of content to quickly identify and publish relevant information that consumers want to read. It also makes it more difficult to retain consumers, as consumers go to the sources that have the information they want instead of sticking with a single source.
Many content producers manually monitor trending topics (using tools such as Google's “Google Trends”, or the like) and search for information that is gaining in popularity. An editor or journalist may monitor this information and then use the trend information to identify topics that should be the subject of a story or article. Unfortunately, this process of monitoring and identifying trending topics is manual, time consuming and not consistent. A publisher that doesn't react quickly and produce relevant and timely content is going to lose readers.
The problem is made more difficult by the sheer volume of news and newsworthy information available via the Internet. Moreover, there are many different types of information sources that may be of interest. As a result, monitoring, tracking and mining this data can be a time consuming, expensive, error-prone, and difficult task. In addition, the results of such monitoring can include a confusing amount and array of information that can be difficult to comprehend, analyze, evaluate, correlate and/or act upon.